Geum triflorum, Prairie Smoke
Bombus huntii, Hunt’s bumble bee
Artist: Sarah Red-Laird
Title: Bee Habitat in Cyanotype 85
Location: J Bar L Ranch, Montana
Project: Coexistence & Bee Habitat Regeneration in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Photo subject: Geum triflorum, Prairie Smoke
Bee: Bombus huntii, Hunt’s bumble bee
Materials: Cyanotype, Bee Regenerative Bee Collection, Barnwood
Field Season: 2024/25
Composed: 2025
The Artist
Sarah Red-Laird is a melittologist, artist, conservationist, and founder and co-director of the nonprofit organization, Bee Regenerative.
She spends the colder months living near her Southern Oregon art studio and “field season” in Montana and South Dakota in her campervan/bee lab studying bees, bison, cattle, and the plants and soil that connect them.
She works with cyanotype to create images of the flowers and charismatic mega and mini-fauna she studies.
Sarah lives her life outside of the bounds of convention to be close to the natural world where the sky is big, the water talks, the air hums, and the ground rumbles with buffalo bellows. Through her art, she hopes to bring you closer to this world, as well.
The Piece
This flower was collected from the top of a hill in Centennial Valley. Prairie smoke in undoubtedly one of my favorite mountain flowers, and they flourish in this study plot, aptly named “Mountain Meadow.”
The plot is covered with flowers throughout the spring and summer and I often see wolf sign as I’m out collecting data.
I can’t look at this flower without thinking of Dr. Suess’ “Horton Hears a Who.” I suppose this is fitting, as my formulative years were steeped in Dr. Suess’ tales of environmental activism, kindness to all things large and small, and finding the bright side when all seems grim.
These themes seem to be underlying in all we do at Bee Regenerative.
The Bees
The Hunt Bumble Bee is a common species found throughout most of the western US and adjacent Canada. Its range extends eastward into the Great Plains and south to the mountainous regions of central Mexico. It accounts for about 5% of bee observations made in the Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas, roughly equivalent to its historic relative abundance in the region. Hunt Bumble Bee were located primarily in the Eastern Cascade, Blue Mountains, Columbia Plateau, Middle Rockies, and Snake River Plain Ecoregions. The bee was most commonly observed in shrublands, developed areas, and riparian zones, where it was found on catmint, lupines, and teasel, among other flowers. Hunt Bumble Bee is considered to be stable across its range. Learn more.
The Process
The “cyanotype” process was developed by British astronomer and chemist Sir John Herschel in 1842. It’s a photographic process that uses iron salts to create a deep blue image. Initially developed for reproduction of his own scientific notes and drawings, it was popularized by his friend, Anna Atkins, a botanist who published a book illustrated with photographs using the cyanotype process, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions.
My attraction to cyanotype printing may be related to my affinity for the scientific method. Though the subject of each piece is steeped in story and complexity, the image itself cannot be manipulated by perception. It simply is a print of simple reality.
This is the hook. As humans, we crave simplicity.
But agriculture is not simple, it’s complicated, complex, and contextual.
The striking cyan-blue entices the viewer to the piece and then invites a deeper inquiry.
I hope each viewer makes the journey to my website to learn about Bee Regenerative’s work with bees on agricultural landscapes and also where to connect with me as I travel around the country speaking on the beautifully complicated connections between bees, bison, cattle, ourselves and everything in-between.
The Work
Beginning in 2023, Bee Regenerative started a multi-year collaboration with the Anderson family, and three Montana ranches that they collectively manage: J Bar L in Centennial Valley, and the Anderson Ranch and Grizzly Creek in Tom Miner Basin.
In 2018 BGO’s executive program director, Sarah Red-Laird, attended a workshop at EcoFarm titled, “Range Riders: Coexisting with Predators,” featuring J Bar L Ranch’s Hilary Zaranek. As a student in the University of Montana’s “Wilderness and Civilization” program in 2008-2009, Sarah was all-too-familiar with the dynamic between Montana ranchers and wolf re-introduction. She hung on every word of the poetic presentation on low-stress livestock handling techniques and living within her cattle herd to protect them from bears and wolves (and vice versa, in a way), but what stuck with Sarah was the accounts of ecosystem recovery. Sarah questioned how Jar Bar L’s management transition to predator coexistence could affect local bee communities, did they recover along with the rest of the ecosystem?
Hilary’s experience of the return of biodiversity as a result of livestock grazing altercation and reintroduction of wolves, beaver, and bears mirrors those of similar projects in Oregon, Wyoming, and Nevada. Though there is ample evidence to prove trophic recovery from coexistence, a rigorous long-term study specifically on bees affected by this management tactic has not been published.
Bee Regenerative is collaborating with the Anderson family to better understand the dynamic between the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s livestock, predators, and bees – to explore the question, could livestock/predator coexistence on rangelands be a key to diverse bee community conservation?